Is the NLL headed to ESPN+?

After hearing the commissioner in some podcasts this past week say that there is a major broadcasting announcement coming soon might it be the new ESPN streaming service, ESPN+? Just today they signed a exclusive deal with MLS to broadcast all their games. Could the NLL be next?

I find the ESPN3 feeds for college basketball to be really good, even for old buildings like University at Buffalo's Alumni Arena and the Canisius gym. If the NLL goes all in on ESPN+ and ESPN+ has similar quality to ESPN3, ESPN might help upgrade the equipment in places like Rochester or Mohegan Sun.

The starting price that ESPN is giving for ESPN+ is $4.99 per month which is very reasonable, IMO. Plus, ESPN is a broadcast partner of TSN so there's the Canadian connection.

If this would upgrade the quality and be the end of NLLTV, I'm all for it (if what Ben is saying comes true).

I found the feeds for Rock games on ESPN3 (or WatchESPN, whatever you want to call it) to have been pretty solid back in the day. My only complaint was that when the picture quality would fluctuate it would get REALLY bad for some stretches of the game, which is still my only issue with ESPN3 when I try to watch some random sports on it nowadays.

The TSN streams were the best ever for quality.....except that they didn't like my Chromium-on-Linux setup for some reason I never figured out.

They were fine on my Android, Microshaft, or Chromium OS devices, and Chromecast worked well whenever I couldn't just run an HDMI wire.

Bonus was the way I was able to scam the TSN2 games - log onto cable provider, add extra tier that included TSN2 subscription, cancel it right away, pay prorated price of 1 day / month x monthly rate at billing.........and enjoy webstream of TSN2 while it took them the rest of the month to cancel web access

How about some actual TV in addition to whatever streaming they have/add?

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Sakiewicz did call it a TV deal and not a streaming or digital deal. We might not know what he thinks are TV deals until they announce it. I still think with Philly coming on board that it's a Comcast connection.

One thing to add about ESPN+......you will be able to buy the existing MLB and NHL packages as add-ons for additional cost.

Sakiewicz did call it a TV deal and not a streaming or digital deal. We might not know what he thinks are TV deals until they announce it. I still think with Philly coming on board that it's a Comcast connection.

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I expect real tv. Nbcsportnet or possibly a fox channel, fsn?. Comcast is looking to outbid Disney for alot of Fox's channels. Espn is.Disney, so this will be interesting. I have longed for real espn coverage, but the other options are also in more households now.

I find the ESPN3 feeds for college basketball to be really good, even for old buildings like University at Buffalo's Alumni Arena and the Canisius gym. If the NLL goes all in on ESPN+ and ESPN+ has similar quality to ESPN3, ESPN might help upgrade the equipment in places like Rochester or Mohegan Sun.

The starting price that ESPN is giving for ESPN+ is $4.99 per month which is very reasonable, IMO. Plus, ESPN is a broadcast partner of TSN so there's the Canadian connection.

If this would upgrade the quality and be the end of NLLTV, I'm all for it (if what Ben is saying comes true).

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Agree on the ESPN3 feeds, but I assume they would just be picking up the same in-arena feeds we're used to.

Sakiewicz did call it a TV deal and not a streaming or digital deal. We might not know what he thinks are TV deals until they announce it. I still think with Philly coming on board that it's a Comcast connection..

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He did kind of back off of that on the Sports Business Podcast. When asked specifically about TV, his response was about how their target audience doesn't want to be restricted to just TV and they would be making major announcements (yes, plural) about "digital broadcasting" in the next 60 days.

"On top of all that, in the next few weeks you’re going to see a major announcement about NLL TV. I can’t talk about it yet, but it’s going to be a landmark, historic announcement not just for the league, but for the sport of lacrosse." -- Nick Sakiewicz

Some kind of VR content? 4K or even 8K content? If it's inside of NLL TV, then it's not a TV deal as he previously called it. I guess we just have to wait until he can talk about it.

He's either announcing a major partnering deal with a content distributor (major conventional network, or something like a Netflix or Amazon.....), or he's announcing a higher quality experience through his own distribution partner.

Or it's just going to be a bit of window dressing and nothing of significance will change.......like most of the other times he sat on a "major" announcement.